Phenomenology

Phenomenology
• Phenomenology is both a branch of philosophy and a
family of research methods concerned with exploring and
understanding human experience (Langdridge, 2007).
• Phenomenology is the systematic study of conscious
experiences (Howitt, 2013).
• It studies the participants’ perspectives of their world;
attempts to describe in detail the content and structure of
the subjects’ consciousness, to grasp the qualitative
diversity of their experiences and to explicate their
essential meanings (Kvale, 1996).
• Phenomenological methods aim to get a better
understanding of the nature and quality of the
phenomena as they present themselves.
• Phenomenology is concerned with the study of
experience from the perspective of the individual,
‘bracketing’ taken-for-granted assumptions and usual
ways of perceiving.
• There are two major approaches to
phenomenological research in psychology,
descriptive and interpretative.
 Descriptive phenomenology
• Descriptive phenomenologists believe that it is
possible to minimise interpretation and focus on that
which lies before one in phenomenological purity
(Willig, 2014).
• The aim of the researcher is to describe as accurately
as possible the phenomenon, refraining from any pre-
given framework, but remaining true to the facts.
• Researchers are required to adopt a phenomenological
attitude in which they bracket all past knowledge
about the phenomenon under investigation.
• Bracketing refers to the suspension of
preconceived notions or personal experiences
that may unduly influence what the
researcher ‘hears’ the participants saying
(Leedy & Omrod, 2014).
• The focus of research is the phenomenon as it
is experienced by the research participant.
 Interpretative phenomenology
• Interpretative phenomenology does not
separate description and interpretation.
• IPA is informed by phenomenology, in the
sense that it is concerned with how
experiences appear to individuals, how
individuals perceive and talk about objects
and events (Smith et al., 2009).
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
• According to Smith, Larkin and Flowers (2009, pg 1)
interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is
‘committed to the examination of how people make sense
of their major life experiences’.
• The aim of IPA is to explore in detail how participants make
sense of their personal and social world (Smith and
Osborn, 2003).
• It aims to explain people’s accounts of their experiences in
psychological terms.
• IPA accepts that it is difficult to gain direct access to
research participants’ life worlds.
• IPA is about the experiences of individuals
working from the basic assumption that the
individual who experiences something is the
expert about their experiences (Howitt, 2013).
• The main currency for an IPA study is the
meaning particular experiences, events, states
hold for participants.
• IPA emphasises that the research is a dynamic
process and the researcher plays an active role
(Willig, 2013).
• The researcher strives to get an insider
perspective but one cannot do this directly or
completely.
• Access depends on and is complicated by the
researcher’s own conceptions.
• IPA recognises that it is difficult not to
implicate the researcher’s own view of the
world as well as the nature of the interaction
between researcher and participant.
• The phenomenological analysis produced by
the researcher is always an interpretation of
the participant’s experience (Howitt, 2013).
• The analyst adds more to the interpretation
(Howitt, 2013).
• IPA is based on the assumption that people
are self-interpreting beings (Taylor, 1985).
• IPA assumes a relationship between people’s
talk, their thinking and emotional state
(Chapman & Smith, 2002).
 When to use IPA
• IPA is about people’s major or significant
experiences (Howitt, 2013).
• IPA is not a finely tuned analysis of how
people talk about their experiences.
• It is a ‘what they say’ rather than ‘how they
say it’ method.
 The researcher’s role in an IPA Study

• IPA acknowledges that any insights gained

from the analysis of a text are necessarily the
product of interpretation (Willig, 2013).
• The researcher listens carefully and must be
alert for cues in the participants’ expressions,
questions and occasional sidetracks.
• The researcher has to engage in interpretative
acting in order for IPA’s aim to be achieved.
• The analysis is both phenomenological and
interpretative.
• The researcher has to assume an insider perspective
that is to stand in the shoes of the participants and
at the same time has to engage in an interpretative
relationship with the data (Aubeeluck, 1985).
• However, access to the participants’ experiences
depends on the researcher’s own conceptions.
• IPA requires a reflexive attitude from the researcher.
 Doing IPA
• The analysis requires a flexible data collection
instrument (Smith and Osborn, 2003).
• Semi structured interviews are the most
widely used data collection technique (Howitt,
2013; Willig, 2013).
• It is extremely important that questions posed
to the participant be open ended and non
directive (Willig, 2013).
 Analysis
• IPA begins by analysing individual cases.
• The first stage of analysis involves reading and re
reading the of the interview transcript (Smith &
Osborn, 2003).
• The researcher produces wide ranging and
unfocused notes that reflect initial thoughts and
observations.
• At this point the researcher familiarises themself
with the interview transcript.
• The left hand margin is used to annotate what
is interesting or significant about the
participants responses.
• Each reading has the potential to reveal new
insights.
• Notes produced at this stage are a way of
documenting the ideas that come up, upon the
researcher’s initial encounter with the text.
• The second stage involves the identification and
labeling of emergent themes (Willig, 2013).
• The right hand margin is used to document the
emerging theme titles.
• Theme titles are conceptual and they should capture
something about the essential quality of what is
represented by the text.
• The themes move the response to a slightly higher
level of abstraction and may invoke more psychological
terminology. (Smith & Osborn, 2003).
 Connecting the themes
• The third stage involves an attempt to introduce
structure into the analysis.
• The emergent themes are listed on a sheet of paper
and one looks for connections between them.
• Some of the themes form natural clusters of concepts
that share meanings or references and some emerge
as superordinate concepts.
• E.g themes such as childhood memories, going to
school and relationship with mother could form a
childhood cluster.
• Smith et al (2009) identified a number of ways
of looking for connections between emergent
themes.
• These include
1. abstraction the grouping of like concepts ,
thus creating a higher level theme.
2. Subsumption realising that an emergent
theme can subsume other emergent themes.
3. Polarisation ,identifying themes which
constitute opposite ends of a continuum.
4. Numeration, noting the frequency with which
emergent themes appear.
5. Function, identifying the functions of the
emergent themes within the account.
 Production of a summary table
• The fourth stage involves the production of a
summary table of the structured themes.
• Clusters are given names and these names
represent the superordinate theme.
• The summary table should only include those
themes that capture something about the
quality of the participant’s experience of the
phenomenon under investigation.
• The summary table needs to include cluster
labels together with their subordinate theme
labels and references to where relevant
extracts may be found in the interview
transcript.
Continuing the analysis with other cases
• A single participant’s transcript can be written up as a
case study in its own right or the analysis can integrate
different cases.
• The cases may be intergrated in two ways
1. The researcher may produce summary tables for each
participant.
• The researcher will then attempt to intergrate these
into an inclusive list of master themes that reflects the
experiences of the group of participants as a whole.
2. The summary table for the first participant
may be used in the analysis of subsequent
cases.
• The researcher aims to recognise ways in
which accounts from participants are similar
but also different.
 Writing up
• Themes are converted into a narrative account.
• The identified themes are presented in the
analysis together with illustrative quotations from
the participants.
• The table of themes is the basis for the account
of the participants’ responses.
• Care is taken to distinguish clearly between what
the respondent said and the analyst’s
interpretation of what the respondent said.